A Girl With a Sword

The plains would make me go insane, I think.

Why is graduation like death? I'm already kinda looking forward to it. College is such an artificial environment, I'm beginning to realize.

Looking back on graduation (2.5 yrs ago) I see it as death as well. You die and are reborn in a way. Your world as you know it just stops. Everyone goes their separate ways. I used to yearn for the reality of the world outside Covenant, and now that I'm out I yearn for the comfort and friends of Covenant (the Covenant of the past not the present). It's hard out here. I hardly ever see my best friends or my good friends. There is not a set Covenant alumni community for me to join out here. But don't let it get you down, just appriciate what you have and savor the moments. I didn't, now I wish I had.

Graduation is like death because first, we stay in school for four years, five if we have the strength, and then...we fade away. Certainly our names pass the lips of our friends every once in a while, but no longer do we participate in the face-to-face encounters of daily life.

Of course, after death, real life begins, and I am enjoying anticipating the prospects God holds in store for me. Yet still, one leaves friends behind when she dies, and that is painful.

I really don't agree with the idea of college being "an artificial environment" or not "real life." The lives we each have are different at different points, but the only reason for them to be false is if you yourself are not genuine in them. In many aspects, the life I had while working and attending a commuter college was not nearly as "real" as my four years cloistered at Covenant. Maybe I'm disqualified from the conversation, since I'm still in this "artificial environment," but...

The blossoms on my narcissus plants will be real, although they will be inside on my windowsill in February. You can live real life anywhere - just don't take your surrounding customs and community for granted, or cut yourself off too much from the way others live. The small-town life of many I grew up with who never left "the real world" is much narrower than I want to go back to.

And Sarah - I'm feeling a bit like those octogenarians who see their friends dying all around them and so feel the right to become happy old cranks who do whatever they want! I miss you.

When I read Linnea's comment about graduation being like death, I was thinking about how the Day Itself is like death. That day was more exhausting than my wedding day! Not only was I trying to neatly tidy up the end of my existence at Covenant (e.g. copy emails before being ruthlessly cut-off the next Monday morning; finding and returning all library books), I was trying to pack up an apartment which I shared with 5 other people (some of whom helped to lesser degrees), entertain fiance and family, end class work and work-study, and then the whole ordeal of actually sitting there for hours first hoping you don't trip in the borrowed heels you are wearing, and then being thankful you didn't trip in the borrowed heels you are wearing, then pictures, pictures, pictures...some kind of party, to be sure. Wanting to talk to some people, and not getting to; forced to talk to people you'd rather not. By the end of it all, I thought I was going to die from emotional and physical stress. It quite literally was worse than my wedding day...because then I was the bride and everybody was taking care of me and letting me relax.

I agree Tuggy. College was Real Life in a specific place and time. But the transition from college to post-college is so brutally quick. Monday morning after graduation the World as You Know It is over, and you're faced with insurmountable student loans and a degree in the humanities. Not a recipe for financial success by the world's standards. So half of us get a frustrating job that has nothing to do with our degree, the other half go to graduate school. Maybe a few become high school teachers. It is a little like death, but a quick re-birth must follow or homelessness (or worse--living with parents) will inevitably follow. When one graduates from high-school, there is the affirming college awaiting in the fall. When one graduates from college, there's only Grown-Up Life that follows. I'd take college any day. :-)

I lived with my parents for 2 years (minus some months...my Hawaii months) and they were awesome! I love my 'rents, and I am sooooo glad I don't live there anymore, I still miss their company. They are good friends of mine, and they are friend-parents because of those years. Don't knock it unless you've tried it.

so there.

I was being facetious.

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I also wanted to say that I LOVE the beauty of the Midwest...the open starkness of the plains; the sky so big that it swallows you up. There's no place to hide--especially in the winter. I think Willa Cather captures it beautifully in My Antonia.